How to drive traffic to your youtube videos
With over 4 billion views a day, YouTube has established it’s presence as a powerful medium to attract viewers.
YouTube is also used as a marketing avenue where people promote their business or blog. It’s a great way to create videos and generate video traffic.
“How can I get more people to view my video?”
“How do you increase YouTube video views?”
“My video doesn’t have that many views. What can I do about it?”
These are some of the regular questions that I get. Once you upload a video, you want it exposed to as many people as possible. Often, that doesn’t happen. At most your video might get a few views a day. Then you wonder how some videos are able to go viral and get a massive explosion of video views!
A- Create shareable videos
If you study some of the videos that have gone viral, you’ll notice that following characteristics.
Those videos are
1. Useful, entertaining or educational
2. Attractive – have a great visual appeal
3. Have a catchy title that makes us want to view the video
4. Have a creative idea around it.
B. Optimize videos for search engine traffic
YouTube is the second largest search engine. Imagine the magnitude of traffic you can get for your video if it appeared on the first page of YouTube Search and/or Google search.
So before you even upload your video, spend time researching keywords.
What keywords, do you want to be ranked high for? What’s the competition?
Use the keywords in the video title, description and tags. You will get more traffic to your video if your keyword is long tail. In other words narrow down your niche as much as possible.
For example, rather than saying “Dog Grooming Guide” use something like
“Dog Grooming Guide for Poodles”
Or you can ignore all that and use something that might peak interest like,
“How to get your dog to be more interactive!”
C. Add your video as a video response
I’ve had loads of success in getting video views using this approach. In lament terms, a video response allows you to get a percentage of traffic another video gets.
However, don’t just add your video as a video response to just any video. You have to make sure that it’s related to the video you are adding.
D. Get your video to appear with related videos
Have a look at other videos in your niche.
If we take the dog grooming niche, search on YouTube what appears first and what type of title, description and tags they have used.
I don’t recommend that you copy each and everything but I’ve noticed that adding the related tags, often ends up getting my video next to their related video.
E. Promote your video with social media
Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and the number of social media platforms keep expanding. The more connections you have the more likely they will spread your video to their following. So get them talking about your video and recommending them to others.
A few weeks ago I wrote about, how to use Slideshare to promote your video. Check it out if you missed it.
F. Leave meaningful comments on other videos
By leaving comments on other videos it will increase exposure to your YouTube channel. People might be curious and want to know more about you. If they click your username they will be able to view your YouTube channel and there by some of your videos too.
YouTube will continue to grow with each passing day and it will be a viable free marketing platform. Upload your video and actively promote them to drive more views so that you can take advantage of this massive opportunity.
